GS4S Skill Shortage Business Responses Database

Nearly half of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) report that they face high or very high skill shortages, making it one of the most pressing structural economic challenges for European businesses (European Commission, 2023). IT, health care, construction, and manufacturing have particularly pressing shortages (EURES, 2024).

The Horizon GS4S (Global Strategy for Skills, Migration and Development) project’s Work Package 4 set out to understand which business responses work best, and under what conditions. This dataset is a deliverable for this work package and may be used freely by interested parties, provided the work is correctly cited (see cover page of the technical report).

The data draws on an in-depth firm-level survey. The focus is on businesses that are either independent or subsidiary MNEs (international with foreign sales and large in terms of having at least 251 employees), or they are independent SMEs (with fewer than 251 employees). The respondents are professionals with at least some level involvement in HR decision-making processes.

This .zip file includes the technical report and additional files including the codebook, syntax files, the dataset itself in various formats and the base questionnaire. The accompanying policy brief is also available open access (see below).